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Jedit posted:It was right that the people of Cable Street stood against the fascists. It was wrong for them to make it a battle. When you're a hundred thousand strong, you don't need to fight to stop 3000 fascists coming through. You just stand there and say they will not. If there's violence, you let someone else start it. The Cable Street protesters chose to start the fight; in the process they surrendered the moral high ground. They also did a lot to prove that Mosley was right - there the BUF were, marching peacefully and legally, when the Jews roused the rabble against them and attacked the police for trying to maintain law and order (at least, that's how they span it). In the wake of the Battle there was a rise in anti-semitism that didn't die down until Hitler declared war. Truly it's the ~Moral High Ground~ that's important here and not, you know, actually stopping the fash. Also the fash don't "march peacefully" by definition. Fascism is based on politicl violence, and even if they're not engaging in violence at the moment, they're preparing to engage in violence at a later date. Fascist marches are all about building unity within the movement and demonstrating their power so that they can go out and murder the undesirables later.
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Aug 10, 2013 19:16
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I watched your video - thanks for pointing it out again. I love short documentaries like that, and I'm disappointed with myself for overlooking it before. When we say that Fascism means war, it's not actually a metaphor. The fash don't do nonviolence, they either do violent action or make preparations for violent action at a later date. This is a fundamental part of the entire ideology, for gently caress's sake. Also an even more fundamental requirement for fascism to be successful is constructing a heroic myth around the movement. Fascism thrives when its adherents see themselves as powerful and righteous, and having that sense knocked out of them by determined resistance is far more destructive than maybe creating some vague sense of sympathy among the general public. Even if the fash claim repression, then so what? If you want to make a difference here you should rather spend your time and effort convincing people that fascism should be repressed. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 11, 2013 |
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Aug 11, 2013 00:24
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Fojar38 posted:If this is true doesn't it mean that violence is unnecessary since public opinion is so heavily against fascism? Why go out and beat people up if nothing they do is actually going to cause any change? Aside from it feeling cathartic to act on your hate? You don't go out and beat up the fash for shits and giggles, you go out and beat the fash when they're trying to stomp on some immigrant neighbourhood.
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Aug 11, 2013 00:33
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Fojar38 posted:That's fair. I mean, it's vigilantism but I know better than to try and be pro-police on Something Awful. The battle of Cable Street wasn't people standing in the way of a bunch of fascist assholes going to abuse people though. The fascist assholes were going to march through and then presumably bugger off afterward. Leaving aside your ignorance of the historical record here, the question of employing violent means or not is a purely tactical one. I also think that one thing must be made clear here: As I have repeatedly explained, fascist assholes are always going to abuse people sooner or later. It's inherent to the ideology. Even if they don't stomp on immigrants and leftists right now, they are 100% guaranteed going to do so when they feel strong enough. With this in mind, why are you defending a group whose political ideology is literally baded on political violence? Why is the fact tha the blackshirts weren't engaging in violence when marching somehow a relevant factor here? You claim to accept the right to self-defense of the victims of fascism, but why should they have some kind of moral imperative of sticking to nonviolent means when dealing with people who literally want them dead for no reason just because said people are still in the preparatory phase of genocide?
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Aug 11, 2013 00:58
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Typo posted:Would you endorse similar usage of violence against Leninists? No we wouldn't, and before you try your dumb gotcha I'll just inform you of the fact that it's painfully obvious that you have no goddamn idea what fascism actually is beyond some vague "bad ideology" when you even try to make this comparison. Omi-Polari posted:What do you mean by valid political philosophy? Fascism is a political philosophy with a distinct and coherent set of ideas attached to it. It's suicidal, self-destructive, racist and murderous - it's all of these things. But they believe that murder is necessary in order to establish a better world. Killing is not an end to itself in fascism, it's a means to build a racially pure, homogeneous, unified and organic totalitarian state. They believe this is necessary in order to purge their national community of decadent and destructive foreign influences, and therefore make their nation better and the lives of their kinfolk better. It's a humanist political philosophy in a weird way, albeit a selective and exclusionary one. See the bolded part? This is where your understanding of fascism breaks down, because violence is quite literally an end in and of itself in fascist thought. If you want to I can start quiting Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" here. This is why fascism is uniquely toxic among political ideologies, and why there are no peaceful fascists. This is also why violent resistance is always morally acceptable against the fash, even if it might not be smart every time.
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Aug 11, 2013 11:23
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Typo posted:Ahhh that touched a nerve Given that liberals have always been far more enthusiastic about suppressing Leninist movements than they ever were about suppressing Fascism, I don't see what the comparison would accomplish except highlight why the liberal is a worthless ally in the struggle against the fash. Also all violence is morally equivalent, I guess. Stop the presses. Typo posted:I never posted that so... Did I say you did?
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Aug 11, 2013 11:33
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Mind Loving Owl posted:It's true that Greek blood has advantages, the amount of olives in Greek cooking make it unappetizing for vampires. And I think this thread is assuming there are only two extremes in anti fascist measures, hand wringing nothing or instant violence, nothing in between. And that all instances of fascism require the same response. If you can find somebody ITT who has argued that violence is the sole and only acceptable option when resisting the fash, then do show the rest of the class. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Aug 11, 2013 |
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Aug 11, 2013 12:10
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ZombieReagan posted:Thing is, vandalizing a mosque or harassing customers in a restaurant is something that's already against the law. You'd probably have a solid case for a hate crime for the swastika as well (I'm not a lawyer, just guessing). It's when you go suppressing political speech specifically that poo poo gets dicey, even if its really lovely behaivior. You gotta look at it from the side of "what happens if some shithead lawyer uses this law against some group that it wasn't intended for" and go from there. If they're just prancing around on the street feeling oppressed, then there isn't much of a law that can be made that isn't going to end up becoming a problem for everyone else at some other point. Eventually authoritarian governments are going to turn around and bite you back, even if they started out well intentioned. So could you give me an example of a time when anti-fascist laws have been abused to attack a non-fascist group? Because I really don't think this is the problem you make it our to be, especially when so-called liberal democratic states have been able to muddle along while literally running murder programs against leftist groups.
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Aug 11, 2013 21:43
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Install Windows posted:That seems more like you trying to pull a "no true fascist" thing though. God forbid that ideologies actually have defined meanings and tenets.
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Sep 8, 2013 23:34
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Ardennes posted:Although to be honest North Korea had been moving off and doing it's own thing for a while. It is telling that most of their military and civilian technology seems centered at best in the 1970s. Also admittedly, China has been supporting them in other ways and it can't really be considered communist since Deng. As far as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, it was a treaty of non-aggression while at least corporations in capitalist countries had been cooperating with the Nazis for a while and their neutrality during the Spanish Civil War was pretty telling as well. Basically everyone was looking the other way for Hitler. As for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, it only came into being because of the so-called liberal democracies of the west bending over backwards for Hitler, up to and including the goddamn Munich Agreement. I don't see how this somehow gives liberals the all-important moral high grund here.
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Sep 9, 2013 11:46
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Sakarja posted:The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact came into being because Stalin came to the conclusion that rapprochement with Hitler was a better guarantee of safety than any arrangement that could realistically be made with the France and the UK. The main problem wasn’t western appeasement so much as their inability to come to an agreement with Stalin on the terms for an alliance. If the liberals have the moral high ground here it’s because Molotov-Ribbentrop was far worse than any of the appeasement France and the UK engaged in. This, of course, is complete bullshit. The liberal appeasement both directly caused the Molotov-Ribbentrp pact, and let Hitler build up his strength to the point where we needed a world war to stop him. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, on the other hand, did lead to some terrible poo poo, but it also allowed the USSR to defeat the nazis eventually. It's also pretty funny how you acknowledge that the Pact was necessary for the USSR in order to have a somewhat tenable strategic position for the war that everybody knew was coming, yet still insist on liberals getting the moral high ground. Guess it's easy to keep the moral high grund when you force everybody else into taking extreme measures just to survive, huh? Also: Sakarja posted:My argument that liberal society is more tolerant towards socialists than Fascists isn’t primarily about authoritarian regimes or their leaders during the Cold War. It’s about individuals and institutions within liberal societies that openly espouse socialist views or advocate socialist revolution. It’s about academics and other writers who attempt to develop socialist doctrine and defend it against criticism; that apply historical materialism and Critical Theory or elements thereof in their work. It’s about people who defend the historical record and contemporary practices of socialist or semi-socialist states etc. All of this is hogwash. Liberals are content to let socialists speak as long as there's no chance of that affecting anything. Liberals are also full willing to use any and all means of repression when it starts to look like socialists might actually manage to affect some change, up to and including funding literal fascists to do their dirty work for them. See poo poo like Operation Gladio for illustrative examples. That there are no fascists in academia is indicative of exactly jack and poo poo here.
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Sep 9, 2013 12:42
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Sakarja posted:This, of course is nothing but rank apologism. The appeasement didn’t directly cause Ribbentrop-Molotov. It didn’t somehow deprive Stalin of agency, or responsibility for his own actions. No one held a gun to his head and forced him into Hitler’s arms. He continued negotiations with France and the UK after the Munich Agreement. Out off the options available to him, Stalin considered rapprochement and far-reaching collaboration with the Nazis the least unobjectionable. This, of course, is nothing but the old, tired liberal talking point that socialists must adopt losing tactics because of the dear ~moral high ground~. This is bullshit. Stalin had tried to form an anti-Axis alliance with the UK and France before and was rebuffed. Stalin even offered to intervene on the side of Czechoslovakia during the Sudet crisis and was rebuffed. So why the gently caress should he trust and/or cooperate with the western governments who quite openly wanted to topple the USSR and had just handed Hitler, whose desire to topple the USSR was as open as open can be, a huge victory without a single shot fired? It is typical dumb propaganda to yank events out of their context and pretend that outside pressure is nonexistent when it suits your argument and then blame people when they choose a lovely option when only lovely options are left. Don't do this. Sakarja posted:Molotov-Ribbentrop didn’t just lead to “some terrible poo poo”, plenty of terrible poo poo was already part of the agreement. And how exactly did the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact contribute to the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany? Was it by allowing the Nazis a free hand and a safe flank while they invaded Poland and France, along with several other European countries? Was it the raw materials it and subsequent agreements provided them with right up until the launch of Operation Barbarossa? It meant that Barbarossa had to be launched from the Bug and East Prussia instead of Belarus and the Baltic. Considering how the actual war turned out, these shorter lines of supply and the fact that the Axis armies could have avoided some pretty unfavorable terrain means that there would have been a real risk of Hitler winning the war, or at least dragging it out even longer with all that that entails. You can whine all that you want about Stalin just being Bad Man who just agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact for shits and giggles, but the fact remains that it turned out to be the right decision. Sakarja posted:I never stated that Molotov-Ribbentrop was necessary for the USSR in any way. The fact that Stalin considered it to be the best option doesn’t mean that it was necessary at all. And again, there was no liberal plot to force Stalin into disgracing Soviet communism as the self-proclaimed leader of international anti-fascism. See above, that is bullshit. The Soviet Union would have been in a competely hopeless strategic situation if it had had the 1939 borders in 1941, because it is pretty inevitable the Poland would have lost anyway. Sakarja posted:The liberals have the moral high ground here because their appeasement, disgraceful, destructive and counterproductive as it was, never went nearly as far as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and subsequent agreements between the Nazis and the Soviet Union did. I’m sorry if this upsets you. Again, bullshit. Liberal appeasement was a necessary condition for Hitler to be able to wage a successful war in the first place. Without Liberal appesement, WW2 could have been a much shorter and far less destructive war. This is quite obviously far loving worse on every moral level than the bad poo poo that came out of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Sakarja posted:I’d say liberals allowing socialists to speak has changed plenty of things in liberal society. But you’re missing the point. The fact that there are socialists to be found in academia, media and politics in liberal societies, while there are far fewer Fascists (if any at all, in certain fields and countries) is indicative of the fact that socialism is tolerated to a far greater extent than Fascism. Yeah, what's a little murder and repression between friends? Surely that's no indicator of tolerance, whereas some dudes being allowed to speak in academia and media is the loving litmus test here.
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Sep 9, 2013 14:17
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Sakarja posted:He seemed to trust Hitler quite a lot. And he apparently had less trouble trusting the western imperialists once his winning tactics backfired spectacularly. And there were of course plenty of reasons for France and the UK to distrust Stalin as well. But you’re right that morals are of no concern to a consistent Leninist. If winning requires enabling and assisting Fascists in imperialist warfare, that’s fine so long as it benefits the party in the end. If you're put in a situation where the so-called liberal democracies have been egging on the fascists to come over and kill you for years and also handed them the means to do so, then yeah, you're pretty much stuck with only bad options. Also it's funny how preventing the genocide of all non-germanic peoples west of the urals is spun as "fine so long as it benefits the party in the end". Because, you know, that was the end goal of the Nazis. Sakarja posted:For some reason “context” and “contextualization” only ever seem get trotted out when it’s necessary to explain away some unfortunate mistake or unpleasant necessity performed by socialists or communists. And if we’re offering each other unsolicited advice, could you try swearing less? I'm terribly sorry for confusing your little head with Leninist concepts such as "mitigating factors" and "aggravating circumstances". Also it didn't take long for the tone argument to get wheeled out. Sakarja posted:Were the German armed forces of 1941 more or less capable than those of 1939? Would it have been possible for the Nazis to launch a surprise attack in the same way if there hadn’t been an pact that Stalin put an extraordinary amount of faith in? Would it even have been possible for the Nazis to launch the invasion at all without the raw materials provided by the Soviet Union? Providing raw materials to Germany was dumb, yes. However, I'm not arguing that the pact was sunshine and rainbows, I'm arguing that it was the least lovely of lovely options. Especially as the actually significant handover of necessary war materiel came with the Munich Agreement which let the nazis take over the supplies and heavy industry of Czechoslovakia intact. Or you knw what, you tell me, what should Stalin have done differently given the circumstances? And how kind of you to give an impossible condition for anyone to fulfil. But hey, I suppose that you can quibble about details here all you want. Doesn't change the fact the entire war wouldn't have happened unless some goddamn liberals had handed Hitler all that he needed to conquer both Poland and France long bofore the USSR gave him anything significant at all. Sakarja posted:And no, I don’t think that it’s “just that Stalin was a Bad Man”, that particular explanation for the development of the Soviet Union is simplistic and sterile. And I never said that Stalin signed the pact “for shits and giggles” (a ridiculous strawman, as you’ll agree). He signed it because he thought it would work out in his favor. And yes, signing that kind of deal with Hitler does kind of make you a bad person, assuming that we bother with bourgeois trivialities like morals. Oh my. What a scathing indictment of the so-called western liberal democracies. Joking aside, I suppose that this is where we need to invoke the forbidden powers of "context" again. See, since I'm such a bad man who doesn't believe in morals, I'm willing to give a little more slack to somebody who makes a deal with the devil because it's necessary for national survival rather than the people who made a deal with the devil because they couldn't be arsed to expend the effort to stop him. Sakarja posted:But the Nazis would obviously have had a far harder time of it without Soviet assistance. And there would‘ve been no question of a surprise attack in the same way as it happened, as well as French and British forces remaining to be dealt with in the west. The nazis wouldn't have had any time of it at all if the western powers hadn't folded like a house of cards every time Hitler did exactly what he had repeatedly said he would do in his blueprint for mass genocide. All this hollering about Molotov-Ribbentrop is just a bad attempt at deflecting the fact that the liberal has always been the best friend of the fash. Sakarja posted:The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact did plenty to prolong the war and make it more destructive. The same can of course be said of western appeasement, but again, it never went nearly as far as Molotov-Ribbentrop. You keep saying this even though you have provided nothing to back it up. Unlike, you know, the folding by the western powers that made it possible for Hitler to wage WW2 in the first place. Sakarja posted:The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? Have we already run out of excuses? You know, for explaining away the fact that western liberals literally hired the fash to be their henchmen in post-war Europe?
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Sep 9, 2013 15:36
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YF-23 posted:Greek leftie that doesn't think violence is the answer here. Saying that non-violence just gets you killed doesn't really build up an argument in support of violence. The tactical question is very much up for debate, yeah. On the other hand, I don't really agree with the bolded conclusion. Since mass media is still in the hands of the capitalist class, vilification will happen regardless of the actions of the left. The question to me rather is how to counter the inevitable flood of bullshit that will intensify once the current government feels the reins really slipping out of their hands.
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Sep 20, 2013 14:56
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YF-23 posted:I honestly don't know how the Golden Dawn can be managed in current conditions. Obviously you combat extremism by attacking its roots, but these roots are the economic situation of the time which is seemingly unmanageable (and certainly not something the current government and the EU want to handle in any actually effective way because "beep-boop I'm an austerity robot cut cut cut"). I feel like they might lose support over this, however. I hate to say this because it's really loving unfair, but the sort of martyrdom that Physsas is an example of might be the best way to expose the Golden Dawn for the ultra-violent gang of thugs they are. I think the left need a preparatory period before any direct action should be taken. It needs to be hammered into people at every turn that this is in fact what GD are and that they won't stop without someone forcing them to. If the mass media won't do this, people need to be told at every opportunity that the mass media doesn't give a gently caress about them or the truth and that people should rely on alternative sources of information. Ideally the left should organize these as well. However, after this I'm afraid that the only method left (unless the government actually starts cracking down hardcore on GD which would be a minor miracle) is mass direct action in order to hamper the capability of GD to organize and carry out their activities. Unfortunately this will mean direct confrontation with the cops and by extension the state. I just hope that the left manages to keep it together somehow.
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Sep 20, 2013 15:42
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-Troika- posted:I think I care more about the innocent people who keep getting beaten by GD members than I do about "the left" being able to feel comfortable about someone doing something about it. I think you'll find that "the left" are usually among the innocent people who keep getting beaten by GD members, but hey, compassion only extends so far on the political spectrum, doesn't it?
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Sep 20, 2013 21:23
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It's all well and good that these fuckers got the boot, but the question is who they'll replace them with. If people this high up are GD sympathizers then it's pretty much certain that the problem isn't contained to the regular beat cops and that the police force is in fact shot through with fash from top to bottom, so where will you find competent, non-fascist people to replace them with? What I'm worried about is that they will just promote people who are just as big assholes as those who were suspended and pretend that everything is OK with that.
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Sep 25, 2013 08:41
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Emanuel Collective posted:Are you American? Do you not understand why Harlem (and most other major American cities) saw race riots over the past century? Because they were (and mostly still are) totally segregated. Segregation led to the violence you're showing us. Am I missing something? You're missing that Emden is, quite literally, a loving nazi. Install Windows posted:I'm not trolling you, I'm just pointing out that the Communists didn't suddenly stop existing when some of the leaders were killed, and in fact remained a viable and quite numerous group throughout the Weimar period. It is straight up counterfactual to act like they weren't. The Rotfrontkämpferbund was banned in 1929, FYI. Your entire line of argument so far has been built on some dumb equivalency argument between the left and the fash in Weimar Germany, and that leftist groups like the RFB could "roam with impunity". All this is more or less ahistorical horseshit that completely glosses over the overt repression against leftist groups in Weimar Germany by both government action and non-government organizations, and is generally a kinda assholish kind of victim blaming. Install Windows posted:And of course you're pulling the "if you weren't KPD you weren't a REAL leftist card" which really should have died decades ago, since it's the dolchstoßlegende of the ineffectual modern day "leftist". It's a bit rich to talk about some dolchstoßlegende among the people who were, quite literally, stabbed straight in the back. Could we just stop the victim blaming here, yes?
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Sep 30, 2013 23:22
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weavernaut posted:If Emden is representative of modern fascists and neo-Nazis, I think I can rest easy, they won't be flattening the continent again any time this yuga. Unfortunately the fortunes of the fash aren't really based on their capacity for reasoned argument.
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Sep 30, 2013 23:28
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Allow me to summarize the message that they're trying to convey:
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Oct 3, 2013 14:39
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Now I kinda want to see the list of which parties are racist, as judged by Wilders. Everybody except the fash are actually racist towards white people, don't you know? And Jesus Christ, what a shitshow this is going to be. Hopefully this will crash and burn as hilariously as some of the previous attempts at fash internationalism.
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Oct 15, 2013 15:30
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Civilized Fishbot posted:It works fine when the nationalism is pretty much just racism. Well, not always. Sometimes it has led to hilarity. Turns out that ultra-nationalists actually tend to shoot their mouths off about them dirty foreigners, and pretty often them dirty foreigners happen to be from the countries of their ostensible coalition partners.
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Oct 15, 2013 20:09
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YF-23 posted:The best weapon so far against the Golden Dawn has been to let them make fools of themselves and show what horrible people they are. It's hard to say what sort of organised resistance could be set up against them; the police cannot be counted on, and when it has to do something it'll go light on them. I do not belong to any left-wing groups and I'm far from the capital so I don't really see any protests, so I don't know how protests and so on get organised, but if anyone wants to truly defeat Golden Dawn the best way to go about it is to reveal them for the scum they are and make that dominate the narrative so much that the mainstream media cannot but follow suit. This happened after Physsas' murder, so what's important is that that narrative is maintained. And then what? What's the endgame here, because if you think that you just have to make GD look like fools and that'll make them go away, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Darth Walrus posted:I dunno, I'd say that the best way to truly defeat the GD is to try to help Greece as much as possible in rebuilding its economy, assembling a functional government, and bringing back a little hope for the public. Direct antifascist action is containment, designed to keep the situation stable-ish until the underlying problems have been solved. Treating people to hate fascists is not the be-all and end-all solution, it just results in the fascists realising they've got an image problem and dressing their horrible opinions up in a different way. Until people are no longer desperate and hopeless enough that fascism and related ideologies seem like an appealing solution, the Golden Dawn will never die even if the specific organisation of that name crumbles. Unfortunately the restoration of econmic stability and hope for the future isn't going to happen with the current government in power, because everybody is still too committed to neoliberal dogma. Given this fact, Greece seems to be headed for a revolution of some kind or other, which makes it even more urgent to contain GD so they won't have a shot at making it their revolution. Omi-Polari posted:Real quick general question, but does anyone think torture is a justified tactic against fascists? Is it morally permissible to use waterboarding against them? Well, do you think that dumbass gotcha questions are a justified tactic when discussing things?
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Nov 3, 2013 12:42
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Grouchy Smurf posted:It is my opinion that if GD gets the lion's share on the next elections (which is impossible), they will be unable to govern due to the vast and conflicting plans they advertised (or worse, plans who the voters think were advertised). They would be able to govern fine because they'd fall back on the old fascist tactic of allying with the old elites and destroying all other factions in the name of party unity. After they were done with destroying the left, that is.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:02
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Grouchy Smurf posted:Well, they won't assuming that we still have a parliament. That's a big assumption if a fascist party is popular enough to actually outright win an election. Because if they do that's typically the last election that will matter for a long time.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:21
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Zohar posted:Manufactured by whom? Is this strategy of tension v2? Who knows? Maybe it's some group looking to stoke the conflict, or maybe it's just some random idiots trying to stir up poo poo for a laugh. After all, the strangest groups take credit for poo poo they didn't do for all sorts of reasons. The important thing to determine first would be whether the document is more likely to be manufactured than not, because that directly affects where you're most likely to find the authors.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:38
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I'd say that what makes fascism unique is the cult of action for action's own sake. Everything else kinda stems from the axiom that action is a moral good in itself. It's a very dangerous idea because it is really attractive to disenfranchised people who feel powerless and downtrodden and there really isn't any counterargument against it besides disagreeing with the axiom itself (and that rarely convinces the fash). Take nationalism, for example. The regular ol' Jingoist may think that his country is the best thing on God's green earth, which typically leads to a lot of bad stuff on the societal level, but for the individual it can stay as a sort of passive belief that he might argue for or vote for politicians who share that view. Not so for the ideological fascist, his ideology rejects such effeminate ideas as debate, democracy and stopping to consider any moral aspects of his actions, instead it tells him that he as a man must go out and take action and drat any consequences. Same with ideas like cultural marxism and poo poo like that. The conservative may also think that the left are poisoning our pure culture, but mix in fascism and it becomes much more likely to create someone like, say, Breivik. Here we also need to make the distinction between the ideological fascist and the rank-and-file street thug. Of course the latter are directed by the former, but their motivations for joining the fash are different and thus the ways of dealing with them also differ somewhat.
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Dec 29, 2013 12:14
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Crowsbeak posted:I was wondering if we could return discussion to the fascists and other authoritarians in Europe. For instance I want to talk about the further threats to democracies posed by Right Wing Authoritarians like Gert Widlers who seem to want to mix neoliberalism with a strong doses of racism. (Despite his claims to "just be islamiphobic, he wants Bulgaria and Romania out of the EU.) I really think that while the rise of the golden dawn in greece is terrifying, the fact that such a person is arising in Western Europe is far more troubling. Also I would like to know what are western Europeans thoughts about dealing with this quasi merging of fascism and neoliberalism? Nothing new under the sun. Fascists and capital have always collaborated to keep the left down in times of crisis. I suppose the only way to deal with it is for activist groups to try and find out where the funding for the fash comes from and name and shame any enterprising Captain of Industry dumb enough to have anything to do with the fash. Otherwise we're still essentially relegated to doing damage control.
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Jan 1, 2014 00:22
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Red Pyramid posted:So the 50,000+ people murdered during the Terror, a huge majority of whom most likely committed no more serious a crime than having jealous neighbors, were an acceptable sacrifice because Robespierre really believed in what he was doing? Was every last execution really necessary to preserve the Revolution, or did they alternatively rob it of legitimacy and public support? I'm failing to see what the difference is when compared to Stalin's purges or Mao's Cultural Revolution. An orgy of hysterical violence isn't any less useless and counter-productive if the paranoid megalomaniac who carries it out has really strong convictions. I too enjoy uncritically applying 21st century liberal moral values and hindsight to judge a historical country desperately fighting against the rest of Europe so that everyone withut a "de" in their name wouldn't be put back in chains. Basically you're being very, very silly here and should think about what you're saying.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:39
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chaos rhames posted:I have never even heard of any capitalist saying that the belgian occupation of the congo, for example, was necessary. As mentioned already, just because you've not personally heard of them doesn't mean that they exist. But the bigger problem with your argument is that you're comparing the actions of a nation literally fighting for its continued existence with the mother of all glorified robberies. Doesn't something about this strike you as a little bit off? Captain_Maclaine posted:While I'd certainly agree that the Jacobin's radical, and I'd go as far as to say violent, nature predisposed them to rise to the forefront under those conditions, I am less certain that in their absence the Republic would have been necessarily doomed. Sure, the Girondins and other moderates were much less zealous and doubtless some among them would have countenanced some sort of compromise with the forces of reaction, but I'm not convinced enough of them wouldn't have at least tried to marshal forces to defend the new state, and once armies started to march they'd have had no choice other than win or be the first to the gallows once the king is back on his throne. I think you underestimate just how radical the strategies of the Jacobins really were and how big of a shambles the french armed forces were in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. "Trying" to marshal forces isn't even close to what had to be done to save the republic, which was the immediate introduction of mass conscription and gearing up for total war.
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Jan 4, 2014 01:45
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Demiurge4 posted:Man the last 10 pages have been pretty brutal. I'm not yet willing to renounce the possibility that Fascists can't be reasoned with. They recruit from the poorest demographics with the worst futures, poo poo just look at the London riots and see how many of these exists. I have never met a rich, well educated Fascist. You can't "reason" with a committed fascist with any expectation of success because fascism explicitly rejects reasoning as effeminate and cowardly. Demiurge4 posted:I'm a socialist and I believe it starts with the smaller programs, there's tons of places in this country where troubled youths are able to meet others and feel as part of a group. These are either run by the city they are in or charities by good people. Most youths who come out of these are at least able to function in society and tend to get the worst jobs, but it's something. You're missing the point entirely. Of course we need to attack the root causes of fascism, but the only ways to do so is either the dismantling of capitalism or the dismantling of the neoliberal ideological hegemony and a return to a strong social democratic approach. The problems here are that the first option is a very long-term solution that's probably not going to happen anytime soon and the second option is only a temporary fix, and it too will take some time to accomplish. I'd say that it would take years at least, maybe even a decade. Demiurge4 posted:We don't have to fight Fascists with violence. We do it by making sure there's no reason to be a Fascist. Actually, yes we do. Since even the dismantling of neoliberal hegemony is going to take a very long time and since the fash consequently will still have a raison d'être for years to come, the left must also employ short-term solutions in the meantime as pure damage control. This also includes violence when necessary, because in case you missed it fascism is an ideology explicitly built on the massive use of political violence against its opponents. To be frank, you're pretty much making GBS threads on people who are engaging in legitimate self-defense and telling them that they should suck up and take it for years until your preferred solution is ready. This is a pretty rear end in a top hat thing to do.
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Jan 5, 2014 12:39
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Demiurge4 posted:And yet people in this thread are advocating a first strike? I understand that Fascists are likely to use aggression and violence to take power if they feel they have the upper hand. But on the other side we don't have any competent Fascists, anywhere. The Golden Dawn are falling apart, the English Defence League is a joke and there are no significant contenders anywhere because they have all been successfully demonized. What people in this thread are advocating is violence against a bunch of poorly organized and ignorant youths being lorded around by racist old farts. If you're faced with an organization that has as a stated goal to literally murder you and yours for existing and the state isn't doing its duty of dissolving the hell out of it, then it is perfectly justified to employ violence against said organization to disrupt its ability to, you know, murder you and yours for existing. This is self-defense by definition. Arguing otherwise essentially measn that you relegate the targets of fascism to sit and wait until the fash are good and ready to come and stomp on them at a time and place of their choosing. Now, the exact kind of violence employed and if it's a tactically sound move to employ violence in a certain situation is another question, but this shock and horror about them poor widdle fash is outright liberal bullshit, and the liberal can acknowledge a hypothetical right for leftists to engage in self-defense, but curiously they always seem to get mad about leftists actually excercising that right. Also it's really easy to dismiss the threat that fascists pose when you're not among those targeted. We can empirically see that fascism isn't falling apart, and it probably won't do that anytime soon since the material conditions that have given the fascist mvements today their support haven't changed. Leftist and minority activists recieve death threats all the time and there are several cases where they have been assaulted or even murdered for their views. This isn't something that should be swept under the rug and ignored, no matter how much the liberal estblishment wants to blame the victims here. Darth Walrus posted:True, but containment and defence seem to be sufficient direct action at those levels. Fascists are scary in how fast they can escalate, yes, but they need resources and public support to escalate, and those are mighty hard to come by when the society and economy are working OK enough for their brand of alternative not to be appealing (let's be honest, an early-stage fascist party is just a bunch of ridiculous, charmless, racist thugs, and it takes a particular kind of alchemy for them to metamorphose into a proper menace). I think it's important not to run into the very same fascist trap of fetishising violence as a universal solvent. You can't kill fascism by obliterating the gently caress out of a party or three, because you won't be killing the demand, just encouraging others to repackage the same reprehensible poo poo at its core in slightly different labels, symbols, and surface policies. Social and economic reform is the only way to make fascism truly dead (or, because human stupidity is infinite, restricted to one or two nostalgic lunatics). I don't see how anybody is fetishising violence, and most certainly not in the same way as fascism does. See, what people keep missing is that fascism's take on violence is pretty unique among modern political ideologies. Most everybody else accepts violence under certain circumstances, but fascism sees violence as a moral good in itself. So until someone comes out and argues that violence is good by default, the comparison is lazy and dumb.
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Jan 6, 2014 11:41
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Entropia posted:A return of fascism in Europe is just as likely as a return of communism. Both are dead ideologies with but a few genuine supporters that are mostly mocked and laughed at by everyone outside their tiny little clique. A return of liberalism in Europe is just as likely as a return of medieval feudalism. Both are dead ideologies with but a few genuine supporters that are mostly mocked and laughed at by everyone outside their tiny little clique. - Forums poster Entropia circa 1815 ReV VAdAUL posted:On the note of Jobbyk, this article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/jan/22/fascist-hungarian-gabor-vona-immigrant-uk states that their leader has spoken positively of Islam, was that a one off or are they consistently well disposed (or at least not outright hateful) towards Muslims? steinrokkan posted:I dunno if it's that much of a contrast. I certainly remember lots of antisemites (at least in Central Europe) flocking to defend Islam when Ahmadinejad made his infamous remarks about Israel. Seems that they usually don't want Muslims on their home turf but see Islam as a kindred ideology that protects other countries from liberal decadence. It's more that fascism doesn't feel like it has to be internally consistent, and thus they can swing wildly from hatred to appreciation in their rethoric. The good money is on the fash hating anybody who's part of a minority, though.
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Jan 23, 2014 10:50
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Entropia posted:No sane human being would say that absolute monarchy is delivering, and most would say that the western political system is in a crisis of some kind or another. The reason why our current dissatisfaction with our system of government hasn't led to a (notable) rise in support for liberalism that it isn't really an alternative. It's dead as an ideology, and outside a fringe base people in countries like Italy and Germany only support them as a form of protest against a political system that has utterly failed them. - Forums poster Entropia circa 1848. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Or, you know, there's a lot of variety in fascist ideology and rhetoric and it depends on which group you're talking about. There usually isn't that much variety among the fash when the subject is whether to hate minorities or not. The variety would be the specific minorities that are the target du jour, but that's pretty much it.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:41
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Entropia posted:You need to work on your satire. Starting to repeat yourself a fair bit. Unfortunately I'm limited by the material I have to work with.
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Jan 23, 2014 20:00
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Economic policy sits pretty squarely near the bottom of the list when it comes to what fascists typically find important. The exceptions tend to be military spending and pie-in-the-sky prestige projects that manifest the glory of the nation but other than that fascism in and of itself has remarkably little to say on the subject, thus leading to an uncommonly wide variety of views on the subject (for fascists, that is). All this is speaking about the fash outside of a position of power though. Fascist parties in power, as is typical, usually end up with one dominant economic position as a result of a round of backstabbing and a purge of those who don't fall in line afterwards. We can see that historical fascist parties don't tend to care overly much how stuff is organized as long as the tanks and planes keep getting built, except for propaganda purposes. The Nazis allied with big industry in Germany because that was opportunate at the time and because their interests in destroying or suborning the workers' movements aligned, not because of some ideological reason.
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Feb 2, 2014 11:38
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Woolie Wool posted:Well that's what I meant by "fashoboros"--if all that's left are Nazis and Nazified institutions, then the Nazis have no choice but to attack each other and the whole Reich dissolves into civil war because they cannot sustain themselves without a focus of hatred and aggression, and they cannot restrain themselves into fighting eternal limited wars (so that their objects of hate can be left to rebuild and be fought again) like Oceania could in 1984. When the fash go to war, they go all-in because their ideology requires no less. Actually, this is pretty much what Mussolini argued would happen in his "The Doctrine of Fascism", an eternal struggle against the Other, however that was defined. This is described as a good thing.
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Feb 5, 2014 10:08
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Just to remind everyone of what the fascist endgame was envisioned to be, let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth:Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism posted:First of all, as regards the future development of mankind, and quite apart from all present political considerations. Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism. Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism, even if accepted as useful in meeting special political situations -- are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations. Fascism carries this anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual. " I don't care a drat „ (me ne frego) - the proud motto of the fighting squads scrawled by a wounded man on his bandages, is not only an act of philosophic stoicism, it sums up a doctrine which is not merely political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit which accepts all risks. It signifies new style of Italian life. The Fascist accepts and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly. Life as he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty and full, it must be lived for oneself but above all for others, both near bye and far off, present and future. Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism posted:That the vicissitudes of economic life - discoveries of raw materials, new technical processes, and scientific inventions - have their importance, no one denies; but that they suffice to explain human history to the exclusion of other factors is absurd. Fascism believes now and always in sanctity and heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive - remote or immediate - is at work. Having denied historic materialism, which sees in men mere puppets on the surface of history, appearing and disappearing on the crest of the waves while in the depths the real directing forces move and work, Fascism also denies the immutable and irreparable character of the class struggle which is the natural outcome of this economic conception of history; above all it denies that the class struggle is the preponderating agent in social transformations. Having thus struck a blow at socialism in the two main points of its doctrine, all that remains of it is the sentimental aspiration-old as humanity itself-toward social relations in which the sufferings and sorrows of the humbler folk will be alleviated. But here again Fascism rejects the economic interpretation of felicity as something to be secured socialistically, almost automatically, at a given stage of economic evolution when all will be assured a maximum of material comfort. Fascism denies the materialistic conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to the economists of the mid-eighteenth century. This means that Fascism denies the equation: well-being = happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed and fatten, thus reducing them to a vegetative existence pure and simple. Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism posted:The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world. Mussolini posted:Struggle is at the origin of all things, for life is full of contrasts: there is love and hatred, white and black, day and night, good and evil; and until these contrasts achieve balance, struggle fatefully remains at the root of human nature. However, it is good for it to be so. Today we can indulge in wars, economic battles, conflicts of ideas, but if a day came to pass when struggle ceased to exist, that day would be tinged with melancholy; it would be a day of ruin, the day of ending. But that day will not come, because history ever discloses new horizons. By attempting to restore calm, peace, tranquility, or. A would be fighting the tendencies of the present period of dynamism. Ore must be prepared for other struggles and for other surprises. Peace will only come when people surrender to a Christian dream of universal brotherhood, when they can hold out hands across the ocean and over the mountains. Personally I do not believe very much in these idealisms, but I do not exclude them for I exclude nothing. (At the Politeama Rossetti, Trieste , September 20, 1920 ; in Discorsi Politici, Milano, Stab. Tipografico del « Popolo d' Italia » , 1921, p. 107) The entire thing can be found here. It is a pretty educational and sobering read, all in all. Also neo-fascists have dropped the forever war rethoric, but the core idea is unfortunately still alive and well.
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Feb 5, 2014 23:30
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Ardennes posted:It doesn't mean it has to be successful, but certainly there is a trajectory to Russian society that is leading to a more and more robust far-right and strong nationalist feelings in the general population. It isn't necessarily a linear track, but most likely the result of progressively authoritarian governments to arrest at least the "feeling of decline." In Russia, Putin took power because for a while he seem to at least slow the decline of Russia, he won the 2nd Chechen War and increased prices for energy swelled the economy, at least on paper. In relative terms, at least compared to the 90s, he seemed to have fixed things. It should also be noted that most people don't realize how incredibly hosed up the 90s were in Russia. We're literally talking a situation that's pretty close to a full collapse of civil society as we know it here. Thus it isn't surprising in any way that there's a strong sentiment of revanchism in Russia today.
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Mar 5, 2014 11:02
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Torrannor posted:I wonder about the EU-is-anti-democratic attitude. When there is a European Parliament that is elected in fair and free elections, which also elects the European Commission, then that seems pretty democratic to me. If they are overriding the wishes of some EU states, it is no different to the US federal government enacting a policy that is against the wishes of certain governors and the population of certain states. The European Parliament has pretty much no actual power, and the elections to it are pretty much shams where very few people know what they're actually voting for. Furthermore, it is completely obvious that the EU as it is now exists to push a right-wing neoliberal agenda throughout all of the EU, regardless of what the people of any member state actually wants. All the actions of the EU during the past six years should be ample proof of this. Still the problem here, as usual, isn't the EU per se, it's capitalism. The EU as it exists now is a wonderful tool for the capitalist class to give a veneer of legitimacy to wrecking welfare states across Europe and loving over the common man.
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Mar 25, 2014 12:43
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